TALES AROUND THE BOARD
The late Reg Lever, one of the founder members of the London Scrabble League, had trouble with his sight later in life. One night he was invited to a new elderly female member's house for a game of Scrabble. He arrived, rang the doorbell and was let in by an extremely friendly young man who offered him a drink. Reg settled happily with his Scotch.
Eventually, the man returned, "Which one of the girls was it that you wanted to see?" he asked genially. Realising that he was at the wrong sort of house and lost for words, Reg blurted out an excuse and fled.
Scrabble players often become completely absorbed in what they are doing. In the North East of England, a few years ago, one player lit a cigarette and put out the match whilst concentrating on her letters. Unfortunately she put the match into the Scrabble letters bag rather than into an ashtray. Having finally made her move she turned to take her letters and was amazed to see smoke coming out of the bag.
The New Zealand Scrabble star Jeff Grant likes telling the story of a North Island tournament player who was navvying in Dunedin one year. As his workmates paused for a smoko he was delighted to see one of them pull a Scrabble set out of his kitbag and ask the visitor if he would care for a three-hander. "Sure, why not", he replied " I play a bit myself". He watched as his co-workers set up the board and racks then tipped all the tiles face up into the lid of the box. They proceeded to count each letter for the correct distribution - a surprisingly professional approach for an ad hoc game, he thought. Suddenly one of them picked out the two blanks and put them in his pocket. "Why are you doing that? " he queried. "Oh" was the reply "those ain't got no letters on them, sport. We never use 'em". [Supplied by John Holgate - Canberra, Australia]
Haggerstown, USA (November 1996)
"A woman was charged with second degree assault on Wednesday night after her husband was struck in the forehead with a Scrabble board. The incident happened when the man tried to restrain the woman after she threw the Thanksgiving turkey into the yard."
The Sun (November 1996)
"A woman leapt to her death after playing a game of Scrabble in which she spelt out the word GONER. Depressed Alison Hill, 31, stormed out of a hospital while playing the game with staff and other patients. Minutes later, she hurled herself off the roof of the multi-storey car park at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre. Unmarried Alison had threatened to kill herself just hours before the tragedy." [supplied by Clive Spate - Nottingham, England]
Daily Telegraph (February 1996)
On March 30 1992, John Engel from Edmonton, Canada decided to propose to his girlfriend Tracy by playing the words on a Scrabble board during their nightly game. He obtained extra tiles from the makers of Scrabble and arranged for an employee from Tracy's work to ring at preset times during the evening .While Tracy answered the phone, John swapped his tiles over.
After several moves the words were in place. As Tracy played ROW onto a triple word, John feigned disappointment. "Couldn't you have spelled YES or even MAYBE" he asked. His puzzled girlfriend pieced together the sentence - PLEASE, WILL, YOU, MARRY, ME, immediately John pulled out an engagement ring.
Tracy said afterwards "I must have gone six shades of red. It seemed so obvious once he pointed it out". John and Tracy have now been married for 3 years but John assures me "It was the one and only time I have cheated on my wife".
The Times (June 1995)
Michael Goldman, a 62 year old Scrabble whizz who felt robbed of victory because he was allowed too little time to visit the lavatory between games in a tournament at the appropriately named Burstin Hotel in Folkestone in November 1991 won damages of £90 yesterday from the organisers of the competition. It was a deliberately derisory fraction of the £5,000 Mr. Goldman was seeking, handed out by a judge who said he was forced to accept that Scrabble aroused strong passions but deemed it "lamentable that this case ever came to court."
Mr. Goldman told a swarm of journalists that he only expected to recover 20-30% of the £10,000 that the case had cost him, he said "You can't value everything in money terms, I was only concerned with the principle."
Judge Hallgarten noted drily that the case produced 46 pages of pleading, 51 pages of witness statements and more than 200 pages of documentation. He described Mr. Goldman as a man of "perhaps disproportinately strong feelings" but deemed the breaks between games insufficient.
In February 1999, a Scrabble tournament was held at the Gateway Hotel in Nottingham. Staying at the hotel at the time was the world famous Manchester United football team, prior to their match against Nottingham Forest, which they won, incidentally, by a record score of 8-1. The following exchange ensued:
Waiter: "Are you with the Scrabble group sir?"
Man: "No"
The man in question was the equally famous Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United.
Midway through a Scrabble tournament at the Bahrain Scrabble Club, local player Tony Kaje was arrested for non-payment of a debt to a former employer. After 3 days in jail the case was settled when his new employer stepped in to pay the debt.
When the mother of film star Mary Tyler Moore died, the actress placed the Scrabble letters Q and U in her casket as a token of the love that her mother had for the game. Scrabble players have suggested that she should have also included an A or S so that the allowable words QUA or SUQ could have been played!
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